Pottstown budget raises taxes 1.2% one day before state budget figures make it unnecessary

Less than 24 hours after the Pottstown School Board adopted a $51.7 million by a 7-1 vote, figures were released in Harrisburg that indicated Pottstown is likely to receive $205,987 more in state funds than was originally proposed in February in Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget proposal, more than filling the budget shortfall the 1.2 percent tax hike was adopted to provide.

During its own budget deliberations earlier this month, the Pottstown administration had whittled the 2012-13 budget gap down to $183,958.

Members of the finance committee had debated whether to have no tax increase at all in the coming year, filling the gap either with additional state funding if it should materialize, or taking it out of the district’s savings account, known as a “fund balance.”

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In the end, they compromised cutting the proposed 2.4 percent tax hike in half, and going with 1.2 percent.

Their vote Monday night was made before the numbers were released in Harrisburg, and reported by the Pennsylvania Independent, indicating the tax hike would not have been necessary at all.

School board member Thomas Hylton was the only board member to vote against the budget, reiterating his previous statements that he would not vote for a budget that raised taxes, although he noted “I’m pleased we were able to lower the tax rate to half the index.”

The index to which Hylton referred is a sort of state-imposed cap on how high the district can raise property taxes in a given year. Pottstown’s index this year was 2.4 percent.

Board member Ron Williams, who had proposed the compromise to cut the tax hike in half during the finance committee meeting, said he would vote for the budget this year because he had proposed the compromise, but pledged not to vote for any other future budget that raises taxes “ever again.”

Also, Williams, who has repeatedly advocated for a school board member to be part of the team that negotiates with the teachers union, then said he believes that part of Pottstown’s reserve funds should be used to provide raises “that members of this union deserve.”

Board member Polly Weand said she would have voted against the budget when it was first presented as the preliminary budget, but said that certain changes — which she did not identify — had satisfied her concerns.

She also said she was unwilling to “cut services and programs,” noting “I think the budget was a good compromise.”

Weand added, “when the community looks at the tax hike this time, I hope they remember that we did not go to the index and that we did consider the concerns of the community, and we also considered the concerns of the students.”

School Board Vice President Robert Hartman Jr. characterized the tax hike as “a minimal increase” and said he thought cutting the tax hike in half was “a very good compromise.”

The .4417 millage increase that results from the budget adoption means an annual increase of $32.61 on a home assessed at $73,816, the borough’s median property value, according to the letter of transmittal provided to the district by Business Manager Linda Adams.

The budget will raise the school district’s real estate millage from 36.8103 mills to 37.2520 mills.

The tax hike represents a 1.27 percent increase in spending, $649,769 more than the current year, and also includes taking $500,000 from the district’s budgetary reserve.